The photographer J. D. Ojeikere was born in eastern Nigeria in 1930 and lives in Lagos. Self-taught, he worked as a press photographer for the Nigerian Ministry of Information and headed the photography department of an advertising agency in Lagos. He later founded his own studio called "Foto Ojeikere". With a career spanning over fifty years, he has documented the changing realities of a young nation from the pre-independence era throughout the early euphoric post-independence period until the present. Ojeikere became world-famous with his series of photographs of African hairdos, which he began almost forty years ago and which is still ongoing. Parts of this series were shown at Documenta XII in Kassel in 2007. The photographic documentation of Lagos' urban modernity is another constant in Ojeikere's work: it started in the 1960s and reaches to the present.

Kunsthalle Bern will present a selection from this historically and artistically significant body of work.